Publikations-Information

Thomas Steinbrecher, Christian MaiEvaluation of Visual Discomfort Factors in the Context of HMD UsageIn Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 4th Workshop on Perceptual and Cognitive Issues in AR (PERCAR)
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The growing number of head mounted displays (HMDs) used by users without previous knowledge in using HMDs leads to situations where the HMD user experiences unintended visual stress. This may be due to wrong adjustments of the visual system, such as dirty or scratched lenses; mistakes in the design of the VR experience like flickering images; and asymmetric presentation of pictures for the left and the right eye. It is difficult for VR developers to detect visual stress faced by a HMD user as the developer is not present when it occurs and the user does not report it. Therefore we propose to explore systems that use electroencephalography and eye tracking that automatically track the users state in order to detect visual stress. We conducted an online survey with an initial number of five VR developers. Normally this does not yield significant findings, and more participants for further research are expected. Nevertheless, first study tendencies reveal that the eye straining factors, such as âposition tracking errorâ and âjitterâ, âflickerâ, and âblurred visionâ have high occurrences in developers everyday practice. Further, initial results indicate a lack of awareness of VR and HMD developers about eye strain factors, including significant ones like the vergence-accommodation conflict.